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European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the European Union can no longer rely solely on a rules-based international system to address emerging threats and must be prepared to project its power more assertively.
Von der Leyen made the remarks Monday during a conference for EU ambassadors.
Von der Leyen said the EU would continue defending the international system it helped build with its allies but warned that relying only on those rules was no longer sufficient.
“We will always defend and uphold the rules-based system that we helped to build with our allies, but we can no longer rely on it as the only way to defend our interests or assume its rules will shelter us from the complex threats that we face,” she said.
Von der Leyen said the bloc must examine whether its institutions and decision-making structures remain effective in a rapidly changing geopolitical environment.
“We urgently need to reflect on whether our doctrine, our institutions and our decision making—all designed in a postwar world of stability and multilateralism—have kept pace with the speed of change around us,” she said.
She added that the EU must consider whether its system, built around consensus and compromise, strengthens or weakens its credibility as a geopolitical actor.
“Whether the system that we built—with all of its well-intentioned attempts at consensus and compromise—is more a help or a hindrance to our credibility as a geopolitical actor,” von der Leyen said.
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